


It Takes Time

by kingandmoon



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek, Depressed Derek, Derek is a Failwolf, Emissary in Training Stiles Stilinski, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Spark Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11925414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingandmoon/pseuds/kingandmoon
Summary: He had no job, his pack had scattered for college, and he paid the delivery guy extra to unload all his food into his kitchen. So really, what was the point?





	It Takes Time

**Author's Note:**

> Just another failwolf!derek being saved by his awesome pack. Especially Stiles. Stiles is the most awesome.

Even when he was young, and he lived in a home rather than a random loft that he shouldn’t be able to afford, his sisters had called him _emotionally constipated._ He didn’t know how to communicate with people, he was painfully awkward, he spent his days sitting at his desk, he didn’t like to go outside. And now, with his floor to ceiling windows and huge bed, it was a long time since he’d left the loft. Isaac came to check on him every so often, prodding him to make sure he’d eaten and to take out the rubbish surrounding his bed. But he had no job, his pack had scattered for college, and he paid the delivery guy extra to unload all his food into his kitchen. So really, what was the point?

It had been two years so far that the pack had been in college, but they all met up back at his loft over their breaks. They ate pizza and watched Derek’s TV while he stayed upstairs in bed with headphones in and ignored them if they came to knock on his door. He knew that his lack of motivation for life was linked to the separation of his pack; he’d paid attention to his mother as he was growing up, just in case anything happened and he became an alpha. But he was never supposed to have this power, and he was never supposed to lead. He felt better when his pack was around, but it didn’t happen often enough for him. What was the point in having something if it didn’t last? They all had to leave, in the end.

Isaac stayed close because he’d decided against college (instead returning to his job at the cemetery), but he’d long since moved in with the McCalls, even if Scott was rarely about due to his veterinary work with Deaton. Closest after that was Stiles, who went to the community college just to have something to do; but he was too smart for it, and was also spending time with Deaton working on his Spark. Erica and Boyd went to Alaska together, and Jackson had followed Lydia to Harvard. Derek still hesitated over calling Allison his pack, but he couldn’t deny it, and she’d stayed local enough for her dad at Stanford; and Cora had stayed in South America.

He knew that his pack were all still close with each other; he’d overheard them talking about a ‘group chat’ and they always seemed to know what everyone else was up to. Derek was quite aware that he was the missing link, but being a functional person was very difficult.

Mostly, when Derek wasn’t sleeping or eating, he read. He’d found all his old books, both from when he was young and when he was a teenager, in the Hale Vault, along with some classic books that he remembered his father being fond of. Sometimes Derek sat in an armchair in front of the huge windows reading Shakespeare, and sometimes he curled up in bed reading things like _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_. He remembered his mother’s voice as he turned the pages, felt his father’s love in the worn spines of the books, and thought about how much Laura would tease him if she caught him reading children’s stories. It had been many years since Derek had cried, and despite his anguish on nights where he could all but feel his family’s ghosts, he found himself physically unable to let it out.

Honestly, it was chance that turned Derek’s Hale’s life back around.

He’d gone downstairs for food only to find none other than Allison asleep on one of the sofas; the second biggest one, because Allison slept curled up. He’d cautiously gone to nudge her, and lucky for him she didn’t take a swing at him; although her arm did go underneath her head as though she were reaching for a knife under a non-existent pillow. She’d apologised quickly, saying that she was supposed to be staying with Scott and Isaac this break (because somehow, without Derek realising it, it was nearly Christmas), but that she’d had an argument with them. They all had keys to the loft anyway. Derek had tried to smile, then, to reassure her that it was okay, but it probably came out more like a grimace. Nevertheless, he’d told her that she was welcome to use the loft as a safe spot whenever she wanted (because God knows it was a haven to Derek), and she’d left looking like she was feeling better. Derek knew, logically, that the interaction had been good for him, because the hole in his chest felt momentarily filled, even if it was only partially, but it had taken a lot out of him, and he stayed in bed for a week afterwards; leaving only for the bathroom and to replenish his food pile by his bed.

After that, he ordered two new set of pillows and blankets and left them in a pile by the big sofa for future use.

Chance came to him a second time around what he assumed was February, when he came downstairs to find Isaac fiddling about with some kind of games console and his TV. He told him that he’d bought an Xbox to play solo games, because sometimes Scott was a bitch about sharing his, and was just setting it up. He’d asked Derek, then, if that was okay, and he’d nodded absently. Isaac offered to let Derek use the console as much as he liked, and Derek was sure that his body had almost tried to laugh as he said that he didn’t have a clue about how to use it. But when Isaac left that evening, Derek did some googling and worked out how to turn the thing on and navigate the menu.

A few weeks after that, Derek had woken up to hear Isaac downstairs on his Xbox. He’d taken a shower for the first time in too long and gone down to where Isaac sat right in the middle of the biggest sofa. Derek knew that he still got claustrophobic, so he sat in the small armchair and just watched him for a while. It was hard to follow the game he was playing: Derek’s senses (though dulled from lack of use) overwhelmed by the flashes and sounds of gun fire, but Isaac made pleased grunts every now and then, so he must be having a good time. He watched for hours, and maybe his brain had been fried from staring at the images for so long because when Isaac offered him the controller he took it. He seemed to ‘die’ within about three seconds, but he still had ten whole goes at it before he handed the controller back to Isaac. Derek might have smiled, then, but he couldn’t be sure.

He ordered seven more controllers that night, because Google told him the console could support eight. Not that he believed it.

Chance hit him yet again in the most mundane way. It was March or April, probably, and Derek was finally doing some laundry only for his washing machine to spontaneously combust. Well, nothing that exciting happened, but it stopped working, leaving Derek in a Crisis™. He struggled with himself for a concerning-ly long time before he finally called Danny. He wasn’t aware of how he had his number; he assumed Lydia had put it into his phone when she set it up for him. Derek wasn’t amazing with technology. Nor was he amazing with people; especially those who weren’t pack. But Danny was friends with the rest of his pack, and he knew about wolves, somehow, and Derek at least knew that he was definitely some sort of mechanic or handy-man or something. Either way, sooner Danny than a stranger.

So he called, and Danny came, and he fixed his washing machine free of charge. Incidentally, the next day was the start of spring break, and when his pack congregated, he texted Danny to invite him over. He still stayed upstairs in bed, but he didn’t put in headphones like he usually did, and instead listened to whatever they were watching on TV. It was a little hard to follow without visual, but just listening to the sounds of his pack settled something inside of Derek.

It was then that Danny became pack, and Derek listened out for them when they were over.

His pack, whenever they were in town, didn’t usually sleep over. Allison did a couple times when things were stressful and she needed an escape, and Cora did once when she came to visit in late June. But on nights when he wasn’t alone in the loft, Derek made sure not to sleep; particularly when it was a wolf downstairs on his sofa. But, by chance, Lydia was staying overnight, around the middle of September, because she’d come home to help her mother move house, and Derek was so exhausted that he couldn’t help but pass out. The night terrors came, as they usually did, and maybe it was the banshee in Lydia that drew her to his suffering, but he woke abruptly to her small hand on his shoulder. They didn’t talk about it, afterwards, when Derek had caught his breath and wiped the sweat from his brow; but when Lydia offered him tea, for some crazy, sleep-addled reason, he accepted. So found them downstairs, side by side, drinking tea and watching whatever Lydia had put on Netflix.

Derek couldn’t remember the last time he’d shared a sofa with someone. When Lydia left in the morning, she told Derek to text her every time he woke up from a night terror. He didn’t ask why, but he vaguely understood the psychological reassurance of not being alone. And so he would text her, and sometimes she would reply straight away, sometimes after a few hours- the time zones were in his favour, after all. But reply she did, and it was always the same thing:

_< <Bad dream_

_> >It’s okay_

In October, Jackson came back for a few days to attend the funeral of his adoptive father. He found that he couldn’t stay in his family home with his mother; the anguish too much for him, so he texted Derek and stayed with him for a little while. Jackson didn’t know about his night terrors, to Derek’s surprise, but he still came up to wake him from them when they happened. He didn’t offer tea or company like Lydia did, but he didn’t expect him to, and it was an okay system. Just before Jackson went back to Massachusetts, he asked him for a ride to the airport the next day. Derek hadn’t left the loft at all in almost three years. But he said yes, because he and Jackson had managed to build some kind of mutual trust and respect. They went out that evening; just for a walk, but Derek needed the practice. The cold air felt strange, but the wolf inside him stirred happily; having been suppressed for so long. Derek would sometimes beta-shift on the full moon, but he had such control that he didn’t need to.

Derek started going for a walk in the early morning, after that; only once every few weeks, but he still went outside.

It was with this that Derek called Boyd and, by extension, Erica, and asked them to spend the January full moon with him. They came, and they took Derek to the woods, and he let his wolf, his full wolf, out. It was blissful, but immensely overwhelming. It had been a long time since Derek felt anything close to joy, and here his wolf was, singing with it and howling out to his pack. He faced quite the emotional drop the next day, suddenly hit full force by everything that he’d denied himself for so long; long enough that he’d forgotten it. Boyd made breakfast, and Erica taught him how to navigate Netflix from the Xbox, and once again Derek shared his sofa. It was a step forwards, no matter the gruelling consequences and night terrors of his wolf being trapped. Boyd and Erica left only when he was stable.

Derek spent every full moon after that in the woods; full shift. Alone, but free.

He was starting to think that chance was more like fate when he woke up one morning in July to find Cora bustling around his bed, picking up old plates of food and dirty clothes and miscellaneous rubbish. In all honesty, he’d been close to getting up and doing it himself; freeing his wolf had brought back all but forgotten senses, and the smell had been starting to grate at him. Cora had bitched at him as he lay in bed, exactly like their mother had, and Derek didn’t even try to argue when she pushed him out of bed and into the shower. He drove them to Target after that, and Cora filled up the cart with more cleaning fluids and products than he figured would be necessary. She stood at the front of the cart and made Derek push her like they’d done when they were kids, and he felt the hole inside him fill up a little as she laughed and held an arm out like Superman. When he paid, it struck him that it was the first time he’d bought something from an actual, physical store in years.

After that, Derek would sometimes go and buy his groceries in person.

The pack spent a lot of time at the loft that summer break; because college was over and they were all starting to move on with their lives and get jobs. Erica and Boyd were to stay out in Alaska, but Lydia and Jackson had come back, a little bit closer to home, to Washington for some kind of fancy official jobs. Scott was moving out of his mother’s house and in with Allison and Isaac, the latter of whom were enrolling in the police force to work with the Sheriff. Derek assumed it was because he was getting old that he didn’t quite get the relationship the three of them had; but they were happy, and Derek couldn’t argue. Scott was now a qualified veterinarian, Cora would stay in Mexico doing something likely illegal, Danny had taken over his father’s company and Stiles remained elusive about what he was doing. One time in the middle of August, when his pack were at his loft, Scott came upstairs and knocked on his door. He knew it was Scott both from the sound of his heart, and because he actually opened the door to greet him.

Scott seemed surprised, but happy, as he asked Derek for a hand in setting up his new place with Isaac and Allison; because they would be training for their new jobs. Derek said yes, and it wasn’t really a surprise to him that he’d done so. He was doing a good job of being a functional person lately. He ventured out with Scott, using his Camaro and Scott’s mother’s car to lug all of his and Isaac’s belongings to their new apartment. Stiles turned up at some point with stuff from Allison’s dad’s house, still in his beat up jeep, still long-limbed, still wearing too many layers, still hyper-active. He looked the most different from the rest of the pack; likely because it had been a very long time since Derek had even seen him. Scott told him that he was still the same old Stiles, when he asked; just that he was more confident now, and he’d filled out a little, and that he wore more plaid. Derek thought it was strange that Scott had mentioned plaid, and had asked Stiles about it. Stiles had thrown back his head and laughed, and told him that he _hadn’t changed at all, big guy_. He told Derek that the plaid was a ‘gay joke’, because in college, only the gays wore plaid. Derek assumed that that meant Stiles was gay, but he used the word _queer_ a lot, so he wasn’t sure that he was just gay. He also wasn’t sure why he cared so much.

When Derek was helping Scott put up his new flat-pack furniture the next day, while Stiles hung around pretending to help but mostly just drinking fruity cider, he noticed the weights and work-out equipment that stood around in half opened boxes. Scott himself was affixing a pull-up bar to the door to one of the bathrooms- he wasn’t keeping track of how many rooms or bathrooms or bedrooms there were; that was Scott’s business. Derek remembered, then, that working out had been an unmissable ritual to him, once upon a time.

Derek started working out at home again after that.

It was with resignation to his fate that Derek took ‘chance’ into his own hands. He was always going to have to be pack leader, and it was always going to be difficult with his wolves and humans somewhat scattered as they were, but he had to be a functioning person for them. His pack had long since stopped asking after him when they had their pack pizza nights; but the continued invitation was obvious. He had assumed, at first, that their nights took place at the loft solely because it was the biggest place, but now he realised that they, too, benefitted from being close to him. They didn’t knock for him, but Derek came downstairs anyway. He was pretty sure he was clean, but he’d been sleeping worse than usual, now that his wolf was awake, and he was wearing old, comfortable clothes, and his hair was a mess. In short, he didn’t look like a fearless leader, and he definitely didn’t feel like one.

They welcomed him, though, with bright faces and welcoming arms. Danny patted him on the back and Stiles scooted over so that he could sit next to him. It was crowded, but not too crowded; as though they all knew how to fit around each other. And, remarkably, Derek slid into place like it was nothing. Like he belonged.

Derek started attending all of their pack get-togethers after that.

Stiles finally came clean to them all and revealed that he was working at Beacon Hills’ one and only library. He claimed, however, that it was just a cover for the real work he was doing, which was to become the Hale pack emissary. Which, yeah. It had been a long time since someone had referred to it as the Hale Pack. He let himself into Derek’s loft, one day, and hung about eating basically the entire contents of his fridge until Derek came down and confronted him. Derek wasn’t sure if Stiles asked, or if he demanded, or if he simply told him, but within the month Stiles had moved out of his father’s home and into the loft. He said it was because Derek needed pack to be close to him, now that he’d opened himself up to it, and that he could better attune his magic to their pack if he was close to the alpha. It was the first time someone had called him an alpha in years.

Derek started thinking of himself as the alpha a lot after that.

It was in search of a normal, functioning life that he asked Stiles for a job at the library. Both working and living in such close proximity to Stiles made Derek feel things he hadn’t felt in a long time. Like happiness for the sake of happiness. He started smiling and laughing again. He ate fairly healthily, because Stiles insisted that they both set an example for his dad, and it was a big change from Derek’s usual junk and comfort food diet. He also started feeling things _for_ Stiles. That was unexpected, but it didn’t feel unwelcome. Months went by, and Stiles must have picked up on how he was looking at him, because one day, when they got out of Derek’s car and walked into the library, Stiles took Derek’s hand.

He and Stiles started holding hands a lot after that.

Eventually, Stiles announced his magic ready for ‘testing’, or whatever he called it, and he went away for a week to become ‘qualified’. His eyes seemed to sparkle more when Derek finally saw him again, and he picked him up from the airport with a bunch of flowers because that was the _normal_ thing to do, and he was a normal person now. Well, normal werewolf. Stiles had thrown himself into his arms, kissing him in front of everyone, and it was then that Derek decided that Stiles was it for him. Stiles and the rest of his pack had saved him from himself.

When they got back home (because the loft was home, now), Stiles announced that they would be defiling every surface they could, because he’d learnt that he could use magic for sex, and _isn’t that so cool, Derek, come on!_ Stiles exhausted him in the best possible way, but he was entirely level headed as they lay side by side in bed, still panting, and Derek told Stiles that he loved him. Stiles had said _I know_ , and laughed hysterically at his reference, before calming down and telling him that he loved him too, _Sourwolf_.

Derek told Stiles that he loved him a lot, after that.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked, if you disliked, if you loved, if it made you question humanity's survival, let me know!  
> Also point me any errors pls thanks


End file.
